10 Horror Movie Deaths That Get Worse The More You Think About It
5. Burn, Baby, Burn - Mandy (2018)
Director Panos Cosmatos is one of the figures responsible for Nicolas Cage's resurgence as a serious acting talent in recent years, helping drag him out of a glut of mindless, straight-to-video action flicks and back onto the big screen with surreal retro horror Mandy.
Cage stars as Red, a taciturn forester who lives a quiet life out in the sticks with his quirky petrol station cashier-cum-artist girlfriend Mandy (Andrea Riseborough). Their relative bliss is brutally shattered by a hippy cult who come a-travellin' by and happen to take an interest in Mandy. Unable to make her sleep with him, covet him or even take him seriously, cult leader Jeremiah Sand (Vikings' Linus Roache) has Mandy strung up in a sack and burned alive in front of Red.
Again, this is a death we largely experience through the lens of another's (Red's) grief, leaving little space to consider the visceral experience had by Mandy herself. Messed up on terrifying, hallucinogenic drugs that the cult forcefully injected her with, it is difficult to say just how horrific Mandy's subjective experience would be. But, add to this the horror and pain of burning alive while trapped in a sack, suffocating and unable to escape, plus hearing the anguished cries of your partner, and it's all too much.